‘Nothing ever happens here.’ It’s a common complaint in The Hague, home to the nation’s bureaucrats and seat of the world’s Peace and Justice institutions. Common, but undeserved: ‘S Gravenhage, as it is officially called, offers an impressively full cultural calendar.
The issue of what to do in the city isn’t about the quantity on offer, but rather the fact that The Hague celebrates quietly: it prefers to BE...

‘I never thought that I would live in another country,’ says Carolina de Souza, shaking her head. She and her partner Guilherme had good jobs at the same Brazilian online services and hosting company, and had just bought an apartment together. She had the life she had always dreamed of: the car, the nice clothes, the serious job in a large company…
They had watched friends leave Brazil and move to Europe, giving them...

I had a bit of a meltdown. Actually, given that it was on the third day of cycling in 4 degree Celsius weather, my reaction was more of a brain freeze than a melting of any sorts. I was on my way to the drycleaners with my husband’s suits when suddenly I thought ‘No!’ I squeezed the handbrakes and stopped even though the light was green and the person on the bike behind me swore and swerved.
My fingers were numb inside...

Here you are – new place, new country, so much to do – now! And you don’t even know how to ask what, when and how. Your aim is to have a good life in this strange new place. Learning the language can help you in that aim both in the short and longer term. It helps you integrate with locals and earn their respect, meet other newcomers in the same situation as yourself, have a structure to your week and,...

Global nomads know it instinctively: there are places in the world where we feel more at home than other places.
I’ve spent a lot of ink describing that how we experience living somewhere new is to a large degree influenced by how well we prepare, what we expect and need at that point in our life and how much we really want to be where we are.
But there may be another element at play: the ‘personality’ of the...